Fall Film Festival Recap: The Best & Worst of TIFF, Telluride and Venice

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor
and Keith Kimbell, Metacritic Film Editor – September 17, 2017

The fall film season kicks off each year with a trio of prestigious festivals: the just-completed Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Venice Film Festival (now in its 74th year), and the smaller but no less interesting Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. It is at these festivals where many of the year's Oscar contenders typically make their debuts. (Last year, five best picture nominees—including eventual winner Moonlight—had their world premieres at one of these festivals.) And this year's crop includes promising upcoming releases from Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Aaron Sorkin, Joe Wright, and Armando Iannucci ... as well as more divisive films from the likes of Alexander Payne, George Clooney, and Louis CK.

Below, learn more about the critical response to these and other notable films (and TV shows) debuting at the three festivals in 2017.

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In 2013, Nebraska earned almost universal acclaim from critics, but Alexander Payne’s latest (in theaters December 22) looks to be more divisive. Combining sci-fi and comedy to take a satirical look at American society, Downsizing stars Matt Damon as an everyman who decides to take advantage of new shrinking technology so he can improve his life. However, he finds that his new community, Leisureland, has the same problems as the one he left.

THR’s Todd McCarthy believes it’s arguably Payne’s best work, one that “easily accommodates many moods, flavors, intentions and ambitions.” But Ben Croll of Indiewire claims it’s “rife with witty visual touches and inspired comic premises but never quite comes together as fully successful whole,” and the A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd gives this “toothless science-fiction comedy” a C.

Downsizing